Where Music Comes to Play

iriver LPlayer Review

iriver announced quite a few players at CES 2008 and now they are starting to tickle out. First was the E100, now the Lplayer- next the Volcano and SPINN to follow in the next few months. I was a bit concerned that iriver lost its way with the E100 which was a rather disappointing low end player. But now they are back on track with a slick design and nice build quality typical to iriver.

The LPlayer is very much like the clix family of players sans a few of the more advance features. While the LPlayer is another great iriver product, there is not a whole lot of innovation, just a solid player offering another choice to the mix.

Accessories

Inside the box: Earphones, Standard USB cable, CD manual, Quickstart guide, Lplayer. Don’t expect too many aftermarket accessories for the LPlayer, but you will definitely be able to find the basics like various cases, lanyards, and screen protectors. Iriver may release some kind of exotic dock like they did for the clix2, but don’t count on it.

Design

While design is always subjective, I have always appreciated the clean modern lines of the iriver family of players. This one is not different and easily fits into the group.

I was a bit worried about the build quality since I was unimpressed with the quality of their last entry to the market, the E100. I am happy to say that iriver is back on track and does have the typical iriver feel to it. I would equate it to the quality of the clix2.

Screen

The 2” 320×240 pixels 262k color screen may be tiny for a QVGA screen, but there is no sacrifice in quality. It’s crisp, bright, color accurate; common to other 262k color QVGA displays of qulity. It is however hard to see outside like many LCD displays but more so since the screen covering is a bit more reflective. Even turning up the brightness you would still be hard pressed to see it by shading the light with your hand.

Battery

Battery life is rated a bit on the low side, but considering its size it’s somewhat excusable. Under real world test I got around 10-11 hours of audio and around 3 to 3.5 hours of video.

Firmware

At the time of reviewing the firmware version was 1.01 and I have yet to notice any serious bugs. I did have to upgrade the firmware from an earlier version that came installed at the time of purchase, but this is a simple task handled by the iriver Plus software or a simple firmware updater downloadable from iriver’s website. Inevitably there will be updates in the future but overall the current version is stable.

User Interface

One thing that is great about iriver products is the consistency in the interface. Since the U10, the predecessor to the first gen clix, iriver has used their own interface they call the “d-click”. It is a really simple set up mainly using 4 directional buttons located on the edge of each side of the screen and sometimes an option button, a power button, and volume controls.

The LPlayer is set up like the clix/clix2/U10 with the buttons located behind the screen, but only adds an on/off button and plus and minus volume controls, with a hold slider on the back of the player.

While I don’t know if I would call the “d-click” UI a “pick up and use” interface it is easy once you get the hang of it. The learning curve may be a day of solid use at the most.

Media Transfer

The LPlayer covers all bases and allows you to manually select MSC or MTP. For those unfamiliar, MSC will function like a thumb drive on any modern OS whether it be Mac, Linux, or Windows. Simple drag and drop will get media on to the player. If you are only going to use it on a Windows OS, XP SP2 or Vista, then you should set it to MTP. MTP will function just like a thumb drive allowing simple drag and drop, but does offer more flexibility for playlists and desktop media players. Playlists in MSC mode can be done easily with the included iriver Plus media player, but will be more difficult with other media players.

Features

FM Radio

Are people still listening to the radio or am I ling in a sheltered world surrounded by digital media? For those who are still fans of the FM tunes you will be happy to know that the LPlayer does a good job of reception and autotune feature. It will also allow you to record stations in WMA 96, 128, 192 kbps bitrates. On the downside there are just basic recording features and will not do anything fancy like schedule or time record stations.

Voice Recording

The player does also record with a built in mic, located on the bottom near the volume buttons at the same WMA 96, 128, 192 kbps bitrates as the radio. Many are usually curious as to if the player will work well with class room lectures. While I wasn’t able to crash a lecture I did do some test around the house. From these tests I would conclude that you may have some trouble if you are sitting way in the back. You mileage will vary, but you could definitely make it work sitting near the front of the lecture.

Themes

There are only two basic selectable themes. They are basically the same color and only really change how the main menu is changed. Since the LPlayer does not have Flash Lite, it cannot use the themes found on the clix/clix2. I suspect they may add more themes in future firmware updates.

Photo Viewer

The screen looks great along as do the photos shown on it. It’s a basic file folder view with thumb nails and slide show capabilities much like any other photo viewer. There are a few basic features such as rotation, 2x zoom, and deletion from the device, but really it’s a typical easy to use photo viewer.

The optimal size for these photos are the screen resolution of 320×240, but much larger sizes work as well. However, keep in mind that the larger the photo gets the longer it will lag when flipping though photos. For example, 5 megapixel images takes about 5 seconds to load or to change to the next one.

Text Viewer

Like the previous iriver players the LPlayer also has text viewing, nice for keeping an address book or a phone number list. Just a basic txt file is needed. If the files are very large (max is 10 megs) there are features like “skip to” and bookmarking to help you navigate the text. Font size is also adjustable in small, medium, and large.

Video

Video playback is actually pretty impressive for a small but relatively high resolution screen. Videos can be in MPEG-4, WMV, or XViD at 30FPS (bitrates vary by codec). At the time or writing this review the iriver Plus media player did not have the profiles to transcode to the LPlayer, but they will be in the next revision of the iriver Plus media player. But in the mean time, the E100 settings work just fine.

Audio

Sound Quality

As many of the iriver products the sound quality is good, but nothing great. The LPlayer lacks extreme highs and lows and overall dynamics. But keep in mind that if you are not spending more than the LPlayer on headphones, then you definitely find the sound quality more than acceptable. My test bed consisted of the Shure SE530s and KRK RP5 studio monitors.

EQ & Sound Enhancements

The LPlayer has a thorough set of EQ settings with presets and a 5-band EQ. It also possesses SRS WOW and HD settings- these, like I mention in every review with players that have SRS sound enhancements, are useless. This could be my personal preference, but I feel it sounds too fake.

Playlists

Disappointingly, there is not on the go playlists, not even a “quick list” or a “go list”. You still can make playlists, but you need to use any media player in MTP mode or iriver Plus for MSC mode. However there is a saving grace in that there are “ratings lists” where you can play all songs you have rated a particular star rating- 1 to 5 stars.

Audiobooks & Podcasts

For audiobook fans that use Audible, you are out of luck, there is no .aa support. However, if you rip your own audiobooks you will be pleased that they do allow for bookmarks. Bookmarks are placed as a list under their own menu in the main music screen.

Podcast Ready, which is a free podcast indexing program that resides on the player, is available in MSC mode only.

Conclusion

If you like iriver products you will like the LPlayer, since it’s the same great formula iriver has used on the popular clix line of players. But by the same note, there is nothing innovating. The lPlayer is the clix/clix2 minus some features and in a smaller form factor. Overall, it’s a nice package for those in the iriver camp and newcomers alike.

@RedSky- i have not listened to the H120/320 so i cannot comment. It does sound about on par with the clix/2. The lowed has plenty of bass, but it tends to fall off and is not as tight in the sub bass. But gain… Did you spend more than $100 on your headphones? If not, sound quality will be just fine on the LPlayer.@Bgrtrumpt- yes im pretty exctited to see the SPINN, I contacted iriver stated it should hit the US around August. I will keep you posted on the details and trust that abi>> will have the review around the time of its release. =)@Shorty – im not sure i would call they LPlayer a low end version of the clix, just a different form factor, still have the same great build quality and design- its just missing a few features because of its size

Grahm- Im sure the tactial buttons are high quality and the D-Click system I’m sure would last. I just don’t know why Iriver would go back two steps. Its like they are rereleasing the U10.Just my two cents.Sorry I’m a guy who likes as many features on his player as possible. Thats why I’m loving my Samsung P2. Nice review by the way.

If the sound quality is “good, but nothing great,” I hardly see why such a positive tone is warranted. Also, that battery life isn’t just on the low side. It’s plain bad.I think you’re showing too much brand loyalty here. Odd, considering the premise of the site.Finally: Any information on whether it will be as overpriced as the Clix was?

@JohnathanBrand loyalty? Sorry sir you will not find that here. Have you ready my iriver E100 review?As far as average sound quality, (what “good but not great” means) not everyone has a $500 set of headphones. the majority are using the stock earbuds or a mild upgrade. The majority will not be able to distinguish between this player and a better sounding player.

@TriguinSound quality aside, i like the Fuze better as a whole: expandable memory, easier to hold formfactor, OTG playlist. Those are three deal breakers for me personally. But to answer your question, you will likely hear little difference between the two with the CX300s. However, i do hear a night and day difference with the SE530s.

Hmm, I’m not too sure about the battery life on this one… surely 10-11 hours of audio is what we would have expected from a player 2-3 years ago?I had a Creative Zen V+, which had around 15-18 hours of life and wasn’t really that much bigger…

Very nice review, thanks!Do you know how the audio quality compares to the iriver S10?I am looking for a new player with a really small form factor (best would be like the S10 but I can’t find any other player as small and I don’t know if the audio quality is good for e.g. the Shure SE110 or SE210) but what you said about the LPlayers audio quality didn’t sound very promising…

Great review Enzo, unbiased as always.Is is just me or is this device awfully thick? I hate people who love slim players only because of their slimness but I don’t see any reason to make this player this thick. I mean, the Cowon D2 is as thick as the Lplayer but it has 4 times the battery life.I really don’t understand why iriver released this…

I bought the player almost on the first day that comes out, not having anywhere i could find information about it. previously owning the first clix i WAS assuming this smaller and more compact and prettier breed would be as impressive, but i was completely disappointed.well the obvious bit was the extreme low battery life, clix 1 can go up to 18~20+ hours and i wont expect a slightly “strip down” version would take away 6+ hours. (and its important if you take long distant flights like i do.)sound quality is quite below par, and i don’t need to own an amazing earphone to tell the difference. again i was comparing with clix 1 which im very happy about. under the same earphone, L-player does sounds inferior, and almost unacceptable. its lacking the low end and the high. and using the SRS HD thing make the maximum volume goes very low (ie not loud enough if u want actual “good” EQ)software is also a flaw, its MUCH slower. and it took away some features such as screen orientation, songs / album names doesn’t organizes according to alphebet etc etc. stuff like that, which i can get used to.but the major major problem is that data transferring could be hectic, I use Media player 11 to transfer songs to the device, like i always does with clix 1, but quite often the device couldn’t read some of the tags of the songs, (which was clearing organized under wmp11) either its being ‘unknown artist’ or ‘unknown album’ or even missing song name and displayed the file name instead. i mean com’on, its almost the basic-est of things. delete and transfer it again, some previously able-to-be-recognised-files could be seen as missing names / album names etcetc…..wtc.my conclusion is, huge disappointment, and stay out of it if u’re consider getting a small player. get the iriver stick (t10?) or something (not that i’d know if the software is as bad) cheaper and similar battery life, and much smaller.

My player arrived last week – I’ve notice three major flaws with it:1. When music is uploaded it doesn’t appear on the player in alphabetical order, just in the order that I uploaded it – unlike most other players. This is very annoying – has anyone else noticed this, and is there any way to change it? (I’ve gone through all of the settings and can’t find any way of altering this).2. There is no carry case with the player, or clip on the back so it’s not really of any use in the gym or running ecetera.3. No adapter came with it apart from a usb wire, so it has be charged through a laptop/pc – this means that if you’re not near a computer you can’t charge it.All in all I couldn’t recommend the Lplayer because of the above issues. If anyone has any suggestions please post!

@gillno, theree isnt anything u can do about it, alongsid with other major flaws. If you can get annoyed enough by the just alphabetical order thing, i suggest u to really get prepared for what more to come.if u want to know what i meant, read my previous comment (the one above urs.)i’ve owned it for a week or so and now i’ve exchanged with a sony s610…soooooooooo much better.

@GillYou can change playlist order in IRiver Plus 3. Most of the DAP these days are bundled only with usb wire, no carry case and basic headphones to cut th ecosts of the player so if you want a charger you have to buy one separately. Another thing If you have problem with the tags like unknown artist/album this means that there is a conflict between ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags (diferent track name, album in those tags) small correction and everything works prefectly). Im using my Lplayer for about a month now Im not complaining at all. (sory for my english not my first language)

@AndyOh in that case how do u fix the ID3v1 and ID3v2 problem? (not that i own the player anymore) coz i’ve tried redit all song info via WMP and iriver plus 3 and even via windows explorer thru the file properties – and no hope in any of them. thanks

Gawd, I want one of these. If it had bluetooth headphone support and took Micro SD cards, I’d buy it in an instant. What’s the use of such a beautiful player attached to the the end of a clunky headphone wire?

Thanks for the review, Graham.Like Lucky Luciano, I’m wonderng whether you can operate the D click system with one hand. I often want to skip past a track while clinging to the back of a seat on a crowded bus. Is it possible to do this? (I can’t find out for myself because I’m in the Australian Capital Territory and no one here stocks them yet).

@GillI have the same problem. Whatever i try, some of my mp3′s always show as unknown artist/unknow album.I also tried to delete the id3v1 tags and rewrite everything but it’s doesn’t seem to help.Anyone else has a solution for this?

@Gill1)iriver does this a lot – It organizes music by when it was put onto the device.2)Check warehouse123. Most irivers at some point in their lives have a case made. And most MP3 players don’t come with clips either. Very few actually do. (If you want one that does – ipod shuffle, sansa clip)3)Most, if not all, players only come with a USB cable. Wall chargers usually can be purchased separately, though.

I just bought the 4GB Lplayer from Newegg and that iRiver organizes music by when it was put on the device is my only complaint. I was getting some unknown album and unknown artist situations but I just used Mediamonkey (knowing my tags are in order) and synchronized my library. This fixed the problem. Still listing music in alphanumeric order is common sense.

I just got mine the other day, and I think your review is completely accurate! Sound quality is so-so, with the player sounding much better on $30 bass heavy earphones than ones costing $200. Still much better than the new nanos. Even after the review and photos I was blown away by how tiny it is! Now the low battery life kind of makes sense. If I had to place this player in a category for usage I’d say it’s a good player for work, for someone who also likes to catch a little South Park on his lunch break.

I’ve been pretty Keen on the Iriver Lplayer since I heard about it Post CES 2008. And I Maintained interest in it Since I left my S10 in the back of a Dutch taxi before getting a plane back to the Scotland. it was only when I was half way over the north sea did I realize and it was too late Since then I viewed the LPlayer as a possible replacement for the S10. What I liked about the S10 was it’s ability to play a BMP picture slideshow, and the ability to wear it as a necklace. And now I could get Video on the Lplayer, a similar sized player to the S10 , all seemed pretty good, However I had a look at one of these in Edinburgh and there is one fatal design flaw. There is no ability to rotate it in portrait mode. I think Given where the lanyard loophole is placed on this device that should have been a viable option. Otherwise the loophole should have been placed on one of the longer edges.Get the firmware updated to include an option to switchover Portrait mode and you’ve got yourself a buyer!!

To All who have problems with track order. It can be changed in Iriver Plus 3 and you can cange it anyway you want, just play with the software. Another thing to avoid Unknown artist/album use only ID3v2 tags and disable ID3v1 Tags

Which player would you say is better (especially the sound quality with the pair of earbufs in the box, because i actually dont want to spend another some of money on buying earbuds)this one, or the Sony Walkman NWZ-E436F?

well, I’ve the bad habit of reading reviews after the purchase, I just dropped by to share a bit on info:NAVIGATION: first of all, I’ve used lots of players and founded lplayer to be the most time consuming when it comes to selecting the songs you want to play: navigation through lengthy lists take a day as it doesn’t speed when you hold the up or down to browse, and there’s no option like walkman initial search or wheels on other devices — you can’t change the way it sorts (i’ll explain how it sorts thing later) — it’s holding factor in widemode isn’t made to be used just by one hand (though almost all of these problems may be solved by firmware releases)SOUND QUALITY: I haven’t listened to new nanos, but I can say it’s on par with Ipod Classic, better than some of creatives, and inferior to Sony and my desktop system. I’m a fan of walkman sound quality and has been disappointed by every other try, but Lplayer is at least is not disappointing, especially that you can tweak the sound a lot.SORTING FOLDERS (and songs in folders): As I said navigation speed is a pain in the A%% at best, but there’s something to solve this particular problem: connect the player > run iriver plus 3 > right click on music folder in LPlayer view > click on change play order > go to folder tab > now sort the folders as you like. You may do the same for songs in folders too and sort them by track #, Artist, etc.note that the artist and genres will be sorted as they appear in the folders, e.g. my folder are structured like these B[ The Beatles, Beethoven], M[Metallica], R[ R.E.M]. in the artists it’s what that appears: The Beatles, Beethoven, Metallica, R.E.M. and the Genres are like: Classic Rock, Classical, thrash metal, Alt. Rock.with a bit of examination you’ll be able to learn it’s logic and though it’s far away from with Ipod or Walkman ease of use, but it’s customizable a lot.ADAPTER: You may buy a 3rd party below 10$, at least I found one, at it works flawlessly.CLIP: that’s something which I wanted to see too, but I guess we’ll be able to find a 2GB Sansa Clip for the price of a clip accessory in the near future, lol.

@Maarten: with bundled earbuds it sounds a bit muffled, lacks lows and high on highs! but it’s not really terrible. anyway sony has a made itself a reputation for bundled headphones that sucks, though I’m not really sure about E series, but that has been the case for S6XX series.@Jay: I do agree with him, one of my concerns was the thickness of this thing from the comparison images, but when I saw it in the store, I just told to my self “well, it may not be as slim as nano or fuze, but it’s bloody tinier than them, I mean it’s really tiny!”@Corné @Gill @P: I’ve explained how to solve both the tags and sorting problem in my previous post, hope it helps you.@Helen: it holding factor isn’t meant to be used by one hand, but I do that pretty often, and to be honest, i’ve founded DClicl to be the best thing I’ve ever used on the go: you know, I usually listen to music going from one place to another from the bus to the train, from the train to the cab and… I needed something which I can easily pause, skip tracks, change the volume without pausing, taking the player out, looking at the screen to see what I’m doing, and dclick offers it all. I just drop it in the pocket, and do all of this without even taking it out of my pocket, though if you have a tight pocket, you need to hold and dehold too.

now some of my personal takes:LYRICS: you need to use both iriver ldb manager and an lrc finder, like minilyrics, together to find the lyrics for most of you songs which is a waste of time, more over it has a 3line lyrics viewer which supports only 16 character on each line. hope they improve both the LDB and lyrics viewer via firmware update.OTG: my previous walkman had that, but I never ever used it as the navigation was so seamless, which isn’t the exact case here. But I’m happy that I can use rating system as an emergency option (I give the songs I want a *, then I’ve and OTG list, I rerank them later – though to be honest I’ve never really done that, not yet )PORTRAIT: yeah, we need that you dumb A&&, it shouldn’t be hard to add that, very PLZ!BATTERY: well, it’s a big jump from my last player which lasted about only 5 hours, but it seems I’m a bit, em… a lot!, behind the pack VIDEO QUALITY: I’m not sure whether it was because the amazing quality of the display and playback control or it was the MUSE, but anyway I feel in love with the concert and got that MUSE song -_-DESIGN: may you please spell S E X Y? what about C H I K?FEATURES: it doesn’t support blueray, and em, you may shake it but it won’t shuffle for you (oh bloody hell! that’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard, shaking to shuffle? it reminds me of Wario Land: Shake It, it’s a game for Wii in case you didn’t know…)RADIO: oh, dear reviewer of this amazing site, yes, there are still ppl who listen to radio and use analog cameras. you know, I believe there’s still a lot of in being surprised by that never-hear-before song you hear on radio, or listening to a play, and of course by seeing your photos on a printed paper before having it reviewed on the LCD of your PnS for thousands of time to make sure it looks OK.

and one last bit of info:will I buy this again?it depends, if I find a walkman 638 (I need something small, you may want to go for 618 if you dont care about the size) for at most 30% more expensive, no I won’t, as I do really care about being able to navigate seamlessly.I won’t by a Fuze or sansa as the main player, they feel and look way too cheap, not only the desig and material, but also the interface. Lplayer has much more features too, features that I care for.I won’t buy an Ipod nano too, I’ll get a walkman instead. much more features and way better sound quality, also i believe its just the same size as the new NANO if not smaller (if you can call that a nano any longer, it’s taller than an Ipod classic, or at least it seems to be so?!)

They should call it JPlayer — Junk player. Mine is now a paperweight. Completely dead. And not before time. As some of the reviewers here have noted, it can’t read tags. It can’t organise tracks. The scrolling is S-L-O-W. Total crap. I will never, ever buy iriver again.

Seriously, DO NOT BUY this. I’m an impulsive buyer, so I end up selling a lot of things I buy. This was by far my worst purchase ever. This review on ABI is so misleading. The Lplayer looks great, but it’s incredibly sluggish making it frustrating to use.- Changing tracks literally takes 5-10 seconds.- Freezes for 10-15 seconds every 11 songs when you’re scrolling.- Music cannot be organized with drag-and-drop.- Impossible to see screen in sunlight.- Around 5 hours of battery life with normal usage.Please do not buy this. I cannot stress it enough. How long did the reviewer use this player? Like for an hour? Seriously.

This is unfortunately an underpowered player for its specifications.Specifically, this player does not play OQQ Q8, which is somewhat of a let down if you have a 150 GB collection of Ogg Vorbis Q8 files sitting around.Better, it does play them, but skips/stutters every time the momentary bitrate gets significantly higher than the 256 kbps which is average for OGG Q8 (ie, at points where the music changes dynamics, especially to “softer”). It’s worse when the screen is on, and ludicrously bad when you also have a scrolling song title. This player is specified to do up to OGG Q10, but it does not.Perhaps it could, given that it also does Xvid and the like but I doubt that it will; this is very unlikely to be solveable with a simple firmware tweak. I returned mine.iriver apparently not even halfway seriously testing OGG has also destroyed my confidence in iriver period. It’s been confirmed on other Lplayers by the store where I bought it, so I do believe this also says something about the value of reviews: didn’t find this issue anywhere before I bought it.

Oh, and by the way, if your Lplayer does not read your Ogg tags, it’s a matter of the Ogg reference encoder using lowercase while the Lplayer accepts only uppercase tags — a long-standing iriver bug. Easy to work around by retagging your library…

Did anybody have success in encoding video for this player? It doesn’t accept any of my files although i encode them in AVI Mpeg4 (XVID codec) 320×240 px. Exactly the same settings as the sample iriver files have. This is slowly driving me crazy…

abi Editor's Choice

SanDisk Sansa Clip+

The Clip+ has a fantastic little form factor; somewhat cheap in build quality but very rugged. The interface is simple and relatively straightforward. The features on the Clip are more or less average, however it supports the alternative Rockbox firmware which provides tons of additional options (gapless playback, Replaygain, playlists, Last.fm scrobbling, etc). Read the full review or go ahead and buy it.

Cowon J3

The J3 is a fantastic PMP with a very nice AMOLED screen and tons of features. It sports Cowon's trademark BBE sound enhancements, and offers a customizable user interface with strong support by our user community. You can usually find it at Amazon for the best price - and don't forget to check out our review.

Microsoft Zune HD

Sure, many of us are not big fans of the walled garden, but there are a lot of great things going on with the Zune: sturdy hardware, ultra easy to use user interface, and a media player that is worthy of Editor’s Choice. You can check out our Zune HD review or stop by our Zune forums for the latest info and gossip.

Phonak Audéo PFE

Phonak Audéo PFE offer outstanding clarity and precision; natural, dynamic mids and treble, and decent bass for a single armature in-ear phone. They handle dense, complex music very well. The PFE work well with most acoustic and some electronic music genres, but bassheads might have to look at other alternatives. They're great for sports as well, since they fit very securely. Check out our review.

Hippo VB

The Hippo VB (Variable Bass) offers a serious subwoofer for on the go, right in your head. They don’t just deliver generous quantities of punchy, textured bass, but good audio quality over the whole frequency range with decent clarity and exceptional soundstage. Exchangeable bass ports let you customize their sound to your liking. Read our in-depth Hippo VB review.

Soundmagic E10 / E30

The Soundmagic E10 and E30 are basically right in the middle between the Phonak PFE and Hippo VB - not too analytical sounding, not too bass heavy. The E10 provide a bit more bass, the E30 a bit more clarity. Both come with a very fair price tag considering the sound quality they deliver - a great choice for the audio aficionado on a budget. Read our E10 and E30 reviews for more info.